


a place to land

by aholynight



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Sexual Tension, Trans Male Character, david admiring matteo while he cooks, david and matteo admiring each other while making out, honestly this is the sappiest shit i've ever written in my goddamn life who have i become, in this fic you will find: matteo admiring david while he works out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 11:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18446051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aholynight/pseuds/aholynight
Summary: "There is nobody else in his life like him. How does he put words around it? How do you map words and speech and language onto this body, this body that David carries with him, that he has shaped, that he has listened to, that he fights with, that he makes up with, this body that is like a partner he has to decided to march through life with, that he still gets spitting mad at sometimes, that he wants so desperately, at the end of it all, to love.What it comes down to is this: he wants to know every piece of Matteo. He wants to know every sound he can produce, every expression, the shades of every smile and laugh and kiss.And he wants Matteo to know him."(Or, David works up the courage to come out to Matteo. In the mean time, they fall in love.)





	a place to land

 

“What’s this one?” Matteo’s voice is soft, almost a whisper. He points to one of David’s sketches, tracing his finger along a beak, wings, soft feathers.

“It’s a bird,” David says, perfectly deadpan. “Just a bird.”

Matteo rolls his eyes and pushes David away. David curls an arm around Matteo’s neck, almost a headlock, and pulls him back.

“But it doesn’t have any, you know, feet,” says Matteo, running his finger along the drawing. The bird’s body is like one long comma, held aloft by its wings. 

David stares at him. Matteo’s hair is falling back into his eyes, even after all the hundreds of times David has pushed it off his forehead. His tongue is poking between his teeth and there’s a flush to his cheeks and he looks so fucking cute that David doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“Birds have feet,” says Matteo matter-of-factly. David raises an eyebrow. “I’ll show you.”

Matteo flips to the end of David’s sketchbook, where he has already doodled lots of nonsense. All over the page are long, errant pen marks where David has tried to grab the pen from Matteo, too late (one day David will make a collage from all of Matteo’s half-finished doodles, their wrestling for the pen telegraphed right there on the page).

In the corner of the page, Matteo draws a hilariously ugly bird with two little twig-legs.

“Now David I know we can’t all have my artistic skill, but _this_ is what a bird looks like—”

David props his chin on his hand. He cocks his head, gazing at his boy, terribly amused.

“Stop looking at me like that,” says Matteo.

David kisses him. He can’t help it. And Matteo kisses him back, because he can’t help it either. He crawls into David’s lap and straddles his hips, biting playfully at David’s bottom lip, kittenish and sweet. David holds him by the hips, under Matteo’s t-shirt, his thumbs dangerously close to the twin dimples on either side of Matteo’s tailbone. He runs his fingers along soft skin, the bumps of his spine, and Matteo shivers, his head falling forward. He is breathing hard, worked-up and pink-cheeked and so tempting that it takes all of David’s will-power not to throw Matteo back onto the bed and do _more_ —

His fingers follow the trail of vertebrae and dip, just so, into the waistband of Matteo’s sweatpants. Matteo inhales, sharply. It’s not a bad inhale. It’s an inhale like he’s overwhelmed, keyed-up and overheated. Like he’s waded into waters deeper than he expected, and he likes it, he does, but he’s never swam out this far before. David moves to touch Matteo’s arms, runs his thumbs along Matteo’s wrist bones. He knows that feeling.

“Hey,” says David. He leans up and kisses Matteo’s neck. Matteo slides down his body, so his head rests on David’s shoulder again. David pulls his sketchbook onto his lap again and lets Matteo flip through the pages, his fingers lingering on certain images. He arrives at the bird again.

Matteo looks up David. He looks like a little boy, waiting to be told a story.

“It’s a sort-of bird. It’s called a martlet,” David whispers, stroking Matteo’s hair. “It’s a mythical bird that doesn’t have feet. _They sleep on the wind._ That’s what Tennessee Williams says. They can’t ever land. It has to stay all its life in the sky, beating its wings. So he’s always free. The entire sky is his home.”

“He must get tired, though,” says Matteo, his voice drowsy, his eyelashes fluttering against the bare skin of David’s collarbone, where his t-shirt’s slipped down. “Having to always fly like that. He can’t ever land. Not even if he wanted.”

 

—

 

The next day Matteo makes David pasta. David offers to help, but Matteo doesn’t let him. So David sits at the table, his chin propped on his hand, watching Matteo cut up a tomato and mince garlic, bustling from sink to cutting board to stove like he actually knows what he’s doing.

“Ok, if you were always capable of this, then why the fuck did you put whipped cream in that sandwich?” says David, watching Matteo drizzle olive oil into the skillet. Matteo laughs, and he looks so happy that David can’t help but get up from the table. He comes up behind Matteo and takes him by the hips, kissing the side of his neck.

Matteo turns in his arms and puts his hands around David’s neck. A hissing sound interrupts them.

Water boils over the pot.

“Shit,” says Matteo, pushing David away. He points at the table. “You—sit.”

David is condemned to the chair because he is a “distraction.” Matteo won’t let him do anything, not even set the table.

“Are you serious?”

“I wanna do it,” Matteo says, pushing the plate in front of him with a fork. He doesn’t even look at his own plate, just puts his chin on his hand and stares at David until he takes the first bite.

David chews. Matteo’s eyes are on his face, shy and a little anxious. David wipes his mouth, thoughtfully, until Matteo starts squirming. He takes a long time to say anything, just to tease him.

“Is it good?” Matteo finally demands.

It’s more than good. David leans across the table and tells him as much, and Matteo throws a tomato at him and makes David clean up the mess, and it’s worth it, all of it, everything.

David is used to comparing his life to films; he is used to his own life coming up short. But this, this simple thing—a boy who likes him, who wants to take care of him, who cares so much about what David thinks, who wants to make David happy, a boy in a kitchen who smells like garlic, a boy with tomato sauce on his collar—this is better than anything David could have imagined.

 

—

 

“You really don’t like any sports at all?” David laughs.

They are in bed. Matteo’s in sweatpants and a white t-shirt, thin and soft and worn-in. His head is on David’s shoulder: his favorite spot in the world, he says.

Matteo’s fingers walk along David’s arms, tracing when he encounters a birthmark.

“When I was a kid, I liked swimming,” says Matteo. “When we’d go on trips to Italy, to see family, there was this lake we used to go to.”

David stares at the ceiling. A familiar dread enters his mind. He shuts it off, shoves it away. He doesn’t say anything.

Matteo tangles their fingers together.

“As much as I liked the empty pool,” Matteo whispers, “maybe we can go swimming for real one day.”

David swallows, tightly. He imagines Matteo, messy hair slicked back, emerging from the surface of the water. His beautiful laugh. He imagines him clinging to the side of a pool, begging David to get in, trying to catch his ankle, trying to pull him under. But David can’t go into the pool. Not even in his brain. The image just shutters out, like a film reel that’s run out of tape. It disappears into a void. And all David can do is stare into that black space, that nothingness, and fall.

 

—

 

Matteo follows David around the gym, like a miscreant child, dropping weights, bouncing on a stability ball, falling into a heap on the mat below. He tries to spin a medicine ball on his finger like a basketball and drops it, cursing loudly when it falls on his foot.

“Why did you even come?” David laughs, as Matteo rubs a bump on his head where he’d knocked into a pull-up bar.

David finishes a weight-lifting set, lowering the bar carefully back into place. Matteo smiles at him dopily, his eyebrows lifting suggestively.

“So I can watch _you_.”

 

—

 

“Have you ever, you know, before?” David whispers, hovering over Matteo. It is early in the morning. David is always most easily turned-on in the morning. Matteo drinks in all of his kisses, little sips of kisses, syrupy slow morning kisses that burn David from the inside, burn him so good it almost hurts.

Matteo shakes his head no. He stares up at David, too raw. He gives David too much of himself.

David takes it anyways. He can’t get enough, even just kissing. He can’t get enough. Matteo lies back in the sheets, pliant, yielding. It’s better like this. When David can control it. Matteo seems happy to give David the reigns, happy to be kissed. Happy with anything. He is not hard to please, this boy. He is so sweet, he _tastes_ sweet, David gives him so little but Matteo accepts it all like a feast.

But one day, one day, won’t he want _more_ —

 

— 

 

The apocalypse is not a hurricane flooding the city. It’s not a zombie virus. It’s not the messiah and his disciples finally coming home to roost. The day of reckoning is not a fire that eats the earth.

It’s a boy telling a boy words he’s never spoken out loud.

 

—

 

They are in the kitchen. Another Matteo dinner: pizza, this time, a simple margherita kind, fresh basil and mozzarella and crust a little bit burnt in the oven, but otherwise perfect, because Matteo made it, made it for him. They are passing a joint back and forth, and their faces are inches away from each other, wearing small, private grins.

“ _Fuck_ , you look good,” Matteo breathes, his lips a brush away from David’s.

“Yeah?”

Matteo nods, staring, as if transfixed, at David’s mouth.

“You’re not very subtle,” David teases.

Matteo looks into his eyes, in the direct, unabashed way he sometimes does, the way that makes David feel like he’s staring right into the sun.

“I don’t wanna be subtle,” says Matteo. “I want you.”

David lets himself be kissed. A kiss is like a current he lets take him. Matteo’s kisses are sweet, almost narcotic. They are too good. They are so good that it scares him. Because a kiss can become a touch can become—

“Hang on,” says David, pulling away suddenly. The confused, puppy-dog look Matteo gives him is like a lightning bolt to his chest. “Hold that thought. Gotta piss.”

He doesn’t have to piss. He stares into the mirror, holding the sink ledge so hard it feels like it could crack under his strength. He tries to control his breathing, the way Laura taught him. Four counts in, four counts out.

When he finally feels okay enough to leave, Matteo is putting dishes in the sink. He doesn’t look at David.

He puts his hands on Matteo’s hips, kisses him, reassuring.

“Laura needs me at home,” David says.

Matteo manages a nod, and David forces himself to pull away, his stomach knotting. Matteo knows. They both know.

 

—

 

The words are a jumble of syllables at the back of David’s throat. They are there, right there. He can see them, hiding in the dark. Treading water, as if at the bottom of a well. They are tired. They want out.

If only David had the strength to just _pull_.

 

—

 

David has been quiet all day. Sometimes he has to be quiet. Sometimes he is afraid if he opens his mouth, all he’ll do is scream.

He can’t scream. He learns more and more about Matteo every day, and he knows now how much Matteo can’t handle yelling. It reminds him of his mom and dad, it reminds him of locking himself in the bathroom, it reminds him of long nights sleeping with his headphones on to drown out noises that he didn’t want to hear—all little pieces of things Matteo has shared late at night, in halting, tentative whispers, with his head on David’s pillow or his shoulder.

So sometimes, David forces himself to be quiet.

 

—

 

“Knock, knock.” Matteo raps his knuckles on the side of David’s head. He roots through David's hair. “Let me in. I wanna see what’s in there.”

David takes Matteo’s wrists, laughing. But the smile starts to fall off his face. Just the smallest slip. But Matteo notices. And David notices Matteo notice. For a moment they are at a stand still, staring into each other’s eyes, shy and determined and scared all at once, waiting for the other to speak.

Matteo butts his forehead against David’s, just to make him smile.

“I mean it,” says Matteo. “I mean, you know. Keep your mysteries, mystery boy.” David laughs a little, his forehead resting against Matteo’s. Matteo picks up David’s chin. “But also, if you get tired of being mystery boy, you can tell me stuff. You can tell me everything.”

David swallows, hard.

“I hope you know that,” Matteo whispers.

David can’t talk, not right now. He takes Matteo by the back of his neck and pulls him close until their lips are an inch apart. He kisses Matteo’s top lip. Then the bottom. Then his forehead and his eyelids. Matteo’s head tips forward into David’s shoulder, and he kisses the top of Matteo’s head.

 

—

 

“Maybe you can practice with me,” says Laura. “Just say the words. Say them like you’d say them to Matteo.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Why not?”

Because he never had to explain himself to Laura. Because he barely knows how to explain it at all. There is nobody else in his life like him. How does he put words around it? How do you map words and speech and language onto this body, this body that David carries with him, that he has shaped, that he has listened to, that he fights with, that he makes up with, this body that is like a partner he has to decided to march through life with, that he still gets spitting mad at sometimes, that he wants so desperately, at the end of it all, to love.

What it comes down to is this: he wants to know every piece of Matteo. He wants to know every sound he can produce, every expression, the shades of every smile and laugh and kiss.

And he wants Matteo to know him.

 

—

 

In the end, it’s a drawing.

Matteo has spent enough nights poring reverently over David’s art—the sweetest thing this boy does, by far—that David feels like it makes sense. Drawing is the only thing that ever makes sense to David, anyways.

Matteo stares at the drawing. It’s all laid out for him there, in bird wings and comic-book panels, everything David has ever wanted to say— _this is why I don’t go into pools, this is why I don’t change in front of you this is why I need to wait a little longer, I want to touch you so bad and I want you to touch me too, it’s not because I don’t want you, I do want you, my god I do, it’s just that, it’s just, it’s just_ —

So he draws it.

“Is this why—” Matteo says.

David nods. Matteo is quiet for a long time, and David cannot breathe. He puts a hand on his heart, without even realizing it. He is not sure it’s still beating.

“You were scared to tell me,” Matteo whispers, finally looking up at him.

David stares into Matteo’s face, searching. He doesn’t say anything. Matteo cups the back of his neck. He presses his face into the hollow under David’s jaw. He wraps his arms around David’s neck.

And David throws his arms around Matteo so hard he almost lifts him off the ground. His eyes are burning, he can feel it. He buries his face in Matteo’s hair. He squeezes his eyes shut. Sometimes leaks out. He exhales in one long, shuddering breath: an eternity of breath held-in, an entire storm of it.

Matteo takes either side of his face and kisses him. And David is so relieved he can’t speak. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, even just his name. Matteo. _This boy_ , David thinks, _this boy, this is the boy, I found him, it’s_ him—

A thumb brushes under his eye. David squeezes Matteo even tighter. _He’s right here._

“I liked that last drawing best,” Matteo says.

“Which one?” If David’s voice is a little raw, Matteo doesn’t mention it.

“The bird. You put feet on him. He doesn’t have to keep flying all the time.”

David kisses him. “ _It’s because of you_ ,” he whispers into the corner of Matteo’s mouth. David never thought he’d ever find a place to land.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> so writing this made me insanely emotional and ngl there is a fair bit of autobiographical stuff in here. this year has been a whole journey!! i'm still working on a lot of the stuff david is brave enough to do in this fic!! but like. you know. writing-as-therapy, etc, etc. these boys mean the fucking world to me, i can tell you that right now.
> 
> also i know the show is gonna put us through Fucking Hell for the next few weeks (as if today's clip was not traumatizing enough!!!) but writing fic is definitely helping me cope--i hope it helps some of y'all too
> 
> as always, comments are much much much loved and so very appreciated. i can't thank you folks enough for all the kind words you've left on my other fics so far, it really does mean the world to me
> 
> @aholynight is my tumblr, feel free to hmu there too xx
> 
> <3


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